This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: The War On Straw: From YKTTW
A "war on strawmanships" page referencing, in its description, a widespread strawman argument against the Evil Empire(tm) Fox News? Which is actually a trope? The irony is way too thick to cut.
Luc: On a side note, I'm not sure what Index this goes in.
Idle Dandy: Don't we have Politics Tropes?
Luc: Yeah, but some of the entries here are apolitical; particularly Straw Vulcan.
Susan Davis: Apropos of nothing, this trope is also Truth in Television: my iaido school regularly does tameshigiri, where we cut up straw mats with swords. So far, the score is humans several hundred, straw zero.
DGM:Thoughts on adding a "Straw Businessman" trope under this? Too many people seem to think that they're all Corrupt Corporate Executives.
Large Blunt Object: Doomed
- Religion is Magic (when religion is denounced as "magical thinking" and portrayed as such. Otherwise known as Somewhere A Theologian Is Crying)
...No. Go back and read the page again. Religion is Magic is not a denouncement, it's flat out misunderstanding. "When this is used to attack a religion?" Almost always, it isn't. This is playing up the perceived mystical aspects of a religion to create a group who have symbolism and magic. It absolutely does not belong here. Corrupt Church, maaaaaybe, when it's being used as a straight attack on the church rather than a device.
This index is getting way too bloated. Sure, Corrupt Church can be used as a strawman to say Religion Is Evul. So? More or less the entire index of Guns and Gunplay Tropes can be used as a strawman by anti-gun folks to say that Guns Are Evul. In both cases, that's neither the whole of the trope or a particularly common use. They don't belong here. Amoral Attorney? More often than not it's just a recognisable character trope with no actual agenda behind it. Ditto Corrupt Corporate Executive. Fur and Loathing? What?
Yarshy Yarblocks: ... I take issue with the implication that you think I didn't read the description when I added it here. You're right in saying the tropes by themselves do not constitute a straw man, but when they are used in such a manner as to misrepresent something as part of the author's way to deliver An Aesop on how bad/wrong/evil/etc. the subject is, I'd argue that it does, but the clarification needs to be made.
This category is hardly bloated, in my opinion; it certainly is nowhere near as long as the category Double Standard, and in neither case do I find them full of tropes that don't belong. That's just me, though.
If you find this to be an abuse of tropes then I'd suggest the possibility of making new ones dedicated to the straw man-making of the subjects I and other tropers tried to add as part of this list. There's probably a trope to be named from the inclusion of things like Fur and Loathing given the circumstances listed in that trope—it's not just a "mark of good or evil" like, say, Good Scars, Evil Scars. There's something else there that the troper who included it here tried to express.
Cactus Wren: I feel compelled to point out that the version the page currently loaded on my computer displays, at both top and left-hand side, ads funded by John Mc Cain's campaign. The ads show Barack Obama and Mahmoud Ahmedinajad, and purport to offer the unwary clicker a chance to "vote" Yes or No on the "question", "Is it OK to Unconditionally Meet with Anti-American Foreign Leaders?" Straw, indeed.
